Glyn Iliffe - The Oracles of Troy (The Adventures of Odysseus)

‘See, Eperitus? There’s one oath you’ll never be able to fulfil. Now, let’s see whether you can keep your other promise – to kill me.’

Apheidas tossed the spear up and caught it with his upturned hand. In the same movement, he pulled it back and hurled it at his son. It split the air with a hiss, passing a finger’s breadth to the right of Eperitus’s neck.

‘Get back, Astynome!’ Eperitus shouted. ‘Get back now !’

He ran at his father and hewed the air where a moment before he had been standing, but the older man had already judged the fall of the weapon and jumped back into the shadows. Drawing his own sword, he leant forward on his front foot and drove the point at his son’s exposed midriff. Eperitus turned and blocked the thrust with his shield, following the movement with an arcing sweep of his blade. Apheidas slipped behind a pillar and the bronze edge drew sparks as it bit into the stone.

Eperitus charged him again and their weapons met, the loud scraping of the blades echoing back from the walls as they bent into each other. They locked eyes, then with a grunt Eperitus pushed his father back into the shadows.

‘You’ve still not got it in you to kill me, Son.’

Eperitus looked at his father’s sneering face and felt a surge of hatred. Then he remembered Astynome’s words and wondered whether she was right, that there was something of Apheidas’s anger in himself. Was he looking at a reflection of what he could become? The thought subdued his fury and he stepped back.

The hiss and pop of the fire was accompanied now by the stench of burning flesh, a smell all too familiar from the many funeral pyres Eperitus had witnessed over the years of the war. He saw his father move to the right, then realised Astynome had ignored his orders and was standing close by. Guessing Apheidas’s intentions, he ran across to protect her, just as his father dashed out of the darkness. The red glint of a blade was followed by a scream. Apheidas reeled away, clutching at the side of his face where the point of his son’s sword had opened the skin. Eperitus instinctively lifted his hand to touch the scar on his forehead, which Apheidas had given him in the temple of Artemis at Lyrnessus several weeks before.

‘Stay back, Astynome! Get out of the house and find somewhere safe to hide until this is over.’

‘I’m staying with you,’ she said, her voice resolute. ‘Haven’t you noticed the clamour outside? The Greeks are already in the citadel, so I’d rather die here with you than be raped and killed out there.’

Before Eperitus could reply, Apheidas turned and ran towards a side door, shouldering it open and letting in the pungent smells of cold night air and vegetation. As if to confirm Astynome’s fears, the sounds of screaming and the clash of weapons could be clearly heard in the near distance.

‘Let him go,’ Astynome said, as Apheidas ran into the square garden that was visible beyond the open doorway. ‘He can’t get out of Troy alive.’

‘He can,’ Eperitus answered. ‘He’s too much of a survivor. I have to finish him now, while I have the chance.’

‘Then didn’t my words mean anything to you earlier? Do you want to become like him?’

‘I’ll never let that happen.’

‘Then think of me. If he kills you, he’ll surely kill me too. Even if he doesn’t, I’ll be captured and taken back to Greece as another man’s slave, forced to serve his every need and left to dream of what could have been between us. I want to be your wife and lover, Eperitus, the mother of your children. Is facing up to your father worth losing that?’

Eperitus hesitated, beset by doubt. Had he become so selfish in his pursuit of Apheidas that he was prepared to risk Astynome’s safety? Was he so driven by his hatred of his father that it surpassed his love for her? Yet he had sought revenge for too many years now, and the fear of losing his opportunity quickly overcame the intellectual and emotional arguments that had suddenly emerged against it. He shook his head.

‘I have to face him, Astynome. Forgive me.’

He ran through the doorway into the garden, dark but for the light of a single torch in a bracket on the wall. It took a moment for his senses to adjust to the open surroundings, trying to spot his father in the pillared cloisters that surrounded the courtyard, or among the shrubs and fruit trees that filled it. But the night breeze blowing through the foliage made it impossible to distinguish any other movement, while the rustling of leaves disguised all other sounds, except for the constant hiss emanating from the snake pit at the garden’s centre. Eperitus gave an involuntary shudder and moved forward.

He spotted the glint of a blade from the corner of his eye and whirled to meet it, just as Astynome cried out in warning from the doorway behind. Eperitus stopped the blow with the middle of his sword, but was sent reeling backwards. He caught his heel and fell. With a victorious grin across his face, Apheidas ran out of his hiding place, his sword raised in both hands above his head. Without thinking, Eperitus rocked back and kicked out with all the force he could muster, catching his father in the stomach. He fell, crushing some of the low shrubs that lined the path that led to the snake pit. Eperitus was up in an instant, but Apheidas was already on his feet and raising his shield to counter the sweep of his son’s sword. A series of blows were exchanged, each one delivered with deadly accuracy and blocked with instinctive skill, until eventually the two men reached the gaping pit and stood back from each other, sweat-covered and breathing heavily.

‘Neither of us can win, lad,’ Apheidas gasped. ‘Why don’t you give this up and let me take my chances out there in the streets? You can try to deny the blood that’s in your veins, but I’m still your father and it’s an offence against the gods for you to try and kill me.’

‘ You are an offence against the gods,’ Eperitus replied. ‘If I let you go, you’ll only blight the lives of others, usurping power and murdering innocent people like Arceisius and Clymene. By killing you, I’ll be honouring the gods.’

He rushed forward again, catching Apheidas off guard and knocking his sword from his hand so that it skittered across the paved edge of the pit. Apheidas lifted his shield in desperation, blocking the thrust that would have skewered his groin and deflecting it into his thigh. He shouted with pain, but as Eperitus raised his sword for the killing blow, Apheidas found the strength to lash out with the rim of his shield and catch him on the side of the head, sending him spinning backwards onto the flagstones.

Eperitus fought the blackness that threatened to consume him, calling on his hatred to push himself back up from the floor and find his feet. His head was dull with pain and as he touched the side of his face he could feel the blood where the lip of Apheidas’s shield had gashed the skin. Then his vision cleared and he saw his father standing at the edge of the snake pit with Astynome held before him. A burning torch lay on the ground, which she must have taken from the bracket by the door.

‘I seem to remember we’ve been in this position before,’ Apheidas mocked.

Eperitus recalled the temple of Thymbrean Apollo, when his father had used Astynome as a hostage to ensure his escape, knowing Eperitus would not risk seeing her hurt.

‘He’s unarmed,’ Astynome shouted.

Apheidas clapped his hand over her mouth.

‘I don’t need a weapon. One twist of my arm and her neck will break. Do you understand?’

Eperitus nodded, slowly. ‘Just release her and I’ll let you go. You have my word.’

‘You’re not very good at keeping your promises, though, are you? And if you think I believe you’re just going to forget everything I’ve done and let me walk out of here, then you’re a bigger fool than I am. But there’s another way to solve this little dilemma. I’ve heard it said that for a man to conquer his fears he has to face them. Shall we see if it’s true?’